All I Did Was Shoot My Man

25

The sun was gone when Hush parked on a side street five blocks from the address Luke Nye gave me. It was a square, flat-roofed pink stucco house not far from the ocean in a run-down but quiet part of Coney Island.

The doorway was inside a vestibule, so when no one answered our knock I used my tools to pick the lock and go in — we had already donned thin cotton gloves.

The first thing Hush did when we entered was to sniff the stale air.

“Huh,” he said.

It was a small, impersonal home. The living room had a couch, standing on short wooden legs, and a tan carpet made from cheap synthetic fiber. It could have been a motel room at the Jersey Shore — in 1957.

The bedroom had an unmade queen-sized bed, a dresser with three drawers, and a maple chair. There were various pants and shirts, shoes and socks strewn on the floor. Dust devils conferred in the corners, and I saw three small roaches rubbing antennae on the barred windowsill.

The kitchen sink was filled with dirty dishes in gray water. The roaches met in greater numbers there.

“Look,” Hush said.

At the end of the kitchen counter was a door with two or three plastic garbage bags stuffed into the crack at bottom.

“That’s where the smell is coming from,” Hush added.

“What smell?”

Instead of answering, the retired professional killer handed me a blue handkerchief he took from his back pocket. He had a yellow one for his mouth and nose.

When he yanked the door open it seemed as if the room was flooded with poison gas.

The roaches froze for a moment and then headed for the smell.

We did too.

Between the washer and dryer, tied to a kitchen chair, sat Durleth “Stumpy” Brown. His once pink skin was now gray and his flabby face had hardened into a mask. My eyes stung from the gases his body released.

With three fingers of his left hand Hush touched Stumpy’s forehead. Almost immediately a huge gutter roach shot out of the dead man’s right nostril. The creature hit the floor and scrambled out between my black shoes. It was then I became aware of the buzzing of flies.

“They tortured him,” Hush said.

“They’re torturing me.”

The killer laughed, he really laughed. It was a jovial, friendly guffaw.

I learned more about Hush in that moment than I ever wanted to know.

“Let’s get outta here,” I said.

“What did we come for?” he asked, turning to face me.

“What they already have.”